Reporter | Intern Huang Junyi
Edit | Yellow Moon
"No one would deny the vital importance of the River Thames to London. It brought trade to the city, but also beauty, squalor, wealth, misery and dignity. Without the River Thames, the city of London would not exist. ”
The River Thames is both the mother river of The United Kingdom and a moving history of the city. In Thames: The Great River, author Peter Ackroyd brings the river to the eyes of Chinese readers, from its source to its climate, from its trade to its literature, majestic and fascinating, as if British culture flows through the waves of the river.
"The river does not become a mirror in this sense, it is gentler, broader, more seductive than a mirror. It makes the reflected world deeper, perhaps deeper than what actually happens on the surface of the water. "With a total length of 215 miles, less than one-twentieth of the Nile, why has this short river had such a profound impact in human history?" "Thames" as a river circulation, leaving us with a revelation about human civilization.
"Thames" is a sister piece of Akroyd's "Biography of London" and the latest work in the "Reading City Series" of Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House. This series of books has taken us to Berlin (Berlin: Portrait of a City), Istanbul (Istanbul: The City of Seven Hills Under the Veil), Venice (Venice: Bazaar of the Island at Dawn and Dusk), and Mumbai (Mumbai: Jungle of Desire)...
At the Shanghai Book Fair, several guests with experience in the UK shared their feelings and thoughts after reading "The Times" from the perspectives of cities, history and people's relations, namely writer Mao Jian, TV host and news commentator Luo Xin, translator Ren Ming, and Zeng Shaokai, professor of philosophy at Zhejiang University.
<h3>Filthy and dirty</h3>
"The feces and garbage in the world's biggest cities flow into the River Thames. Sewage used by 3 million people bubbles in the tides – and the River Thames becomes a huge, open sewer. "In Akroyd's pen, the dark past of the River Thames, where romance and elegance coexist, is brutally revealed, and it was once a river of death. Referring to the most impressive part of the book, the three guests interpret the depiction of the "filthy and dirty" River Thames in the book from different perspectives.
Luo Xin shared with readers the BBC documentary series "Dirty City", in which he mentioned that as the first industrialized country in history, Britain had a dirty and chaotic past, and it was not until 1666 that the city of London began to be reconstructed after a fire that burned on the North Shore for four days. "The British love beer is not innate, in large part because the water in the Thames is too dirty, and the safest way for people to ensure good health is to drink processed beer," Luo Xin said.
Mao Jian analyzed the "dirty mess" from the literary level. She believes that the most disastrous part of the book takes place in the section "The River of Death", in which the author uses only two pages to portray the details of death, tragedy and parting in a frightening and tragic way, creating a cinematic imagination space. "People like us who haven't been to the edge of the Thames will think it's the birthplace of the story – without the River Thames, london can't seem to have a story – and that's what makes the river so fascinating," she said. ”
Zeng Shaokai agreed with Mao Jian's point of view, proposing that English literature from the 17th century onwards placed special emphasis on imaginative space, "which is very related to British empiricist philosophy, and the treatment of painting with words is vividly reflected in this book." ”
<h3>Urban cultural living room</h3>
"Oxford is a key turning point where you can look upstream and think about the quiet origins of the River Thames, or you can look downstream and gaze at the vast expanse of London that is coming."
Ren Ming admitted that when he translated the book "Thames", he obviously felt that the upper, middle and lower reaches of the Thames River were very different, and Ackerroyd's grasp of different layers was natural and vivid, and at the same time full of philosophical thinking.
Stratification does not mean fragmentation, and public cultural atmosphere can be seen everywhere in the city of London. Luo Xin mentioned that what impressed him most about his experience in the UK was the "public seat" placed on the river Thames, on which the public could mark the name of the person they wanted to commemorate after donating money, and each seat carried a person's story. In addition, the British are also very keen to have open-air gatherings on the riverside, "it is a process of information exchange." What kind of society is the best society? It must be a society where knowledge can be shared. Taking this as an example, Luo Xin believes that the role of the River Thames as the city's public cultural living room has a pivotal position.
The River flows through Oxford University, and Zeng Shaokai, who studied for a doctorate in philosophy at this university, recalls that his impression of the Times after he came to England has undergone an instant transformation - from the dark impression of reading "Dickens" to the modern romantic beauty, in addition to the natural scenery of the river, more color comes from the memory of chatting and laughing with professors and scholars on the bank of the river. Imagine the long summer twilight dipping into the night, the sparkling waves of the River Thames, and everyone at this moment establishes some indelible connection with the city.
<h3>Born again after death</h3>
In the course of reading Thames, Mao Jian found that the content of specific chapters reflected the British attitude towards death that was very different from ours. "The United Kingdom is often considered a 'land of suicide', and there are many texts in the book that have something to do with 'death', but these deaths are written very lightly, even with strange joy." She said, "Expressing strangeness and joy in an anti-life way, this attitude of death, in a way, has created English literature." ”
"Weightlessness and weightlifting are very important features of English literature," Luo Xin added. Regarding the concept of death in English literature, Zeng Shaokai used the book "The Journey of heaven" by the English writer John Bunyan as an example to explain to the reader: "The river has always had a literary symbolic meaning, and the River Thames brought rebirth after death after the Great Fire in London, associating the river with death, bringing death and bringing life. ”
Ren Ming added that during the translation process, he found that the book's description of the death plot was not lacking in extremely tragic parts. The author not only interprets the British attitude towards death from a religious point of view, but also shows how the view of nature enriches the river and forms the cycle of all things from the perspective of natural reverence.